This time, I’m ready for how long the wait will be. Again, it seems interminable, but I stand firm. Finally, the numbers both drop again and I stop the timer.

Sixty-six seconds.

“Measured velocity” is going down by one every sixty-six seconds. Some quick math tells me that’s an acceleration of… 15 meters per second per second. That’s the same “gravity” acceleration I worked out earlier.

The force I’m feeling isn’t gravity. And it’s not a centrifuge. I’m in a spaceship that is constantly accelerating in a line. Well, actually it’s decelerating—the values are going down.

And that velocity… it’s a lot of velocity. Yes, it’s going down, but wow! To reach Earth orbit you only need to go 8 kps. I’m going over 11,000. That’s faster than anything in the solar system. Anything that fast will escape the sun’s gravity and go flying off into interstellar space.

The readout doesn’t have anything to indicate what direction I’m going. Just a relative velocity. So now my question is: Am I barreling toward the sun, or away from it?

It’s almost academic. I’m either on a collision course with the sun or on my way out to deep space with no hope of returning. Or, I might be headed in the sun’s general direction, but not on a collision course. If that’s the case, I’ll miss the sun… and then fly off into deep space with no hope of returning.

Well, if the image of the sun is real-time, then the sunspot will get larger or smaller on-screen as I travel. So I just have to wait until I know if it’s real-time. That’ll take about an hour. I start the stopwatch.

I acquaint myself with the million other screens in the little room. Most of them have something to say, but one of them just shows an image of a circular crest. I think it’s probably an idle screen or something. If I touch it, that computer will wake up. But that idle screen might be the most informative thing in here.

It’s a mission crest. I’ve seen enough NASA documentaries to know one when I see one. The circular crest has an outer ring of blue with white text. The text reads HAIL MARY across the top and EARTH across the bottom. The name and “port of call” for this vessel.

I didn’t think the ship came from somewhere other than Earth, but okay. Anyway, I guess I finally know the name of this ship I’m on.

I’m aboard the Hail Mary.

Not sure what to do with that information.

But that’s not all the crest has to tell me. Inside the blue band, there’s a black circle with weird symbols inside: a yellow circle with a dot in the middle, a blue circle with a white cross, and a smaller yellow circle with a lowercase t. No idea what any of that is supposed to mean. Around the edge of the black area it says: “姚,” “ИЛЮХИНА,” and “GRACE.”